


¿como es que dice el coro, cabrón?

by hypotheticalfanfic



Series: losers collex [1]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Dissociation, E mostly for language, I mean there is deffo sex but they are foul-mouthed, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: They’d packed up and run, and when Cougar’s stiff muscles quaked badly Jensen had half-carried him, hadn’t shut up, and that was another time, maybe the first real time, Cougar knew it. Cougar thought hard for a few minutes that night. Better, he decided, to let it slip through his hands like water. Try to hold too hard and you start to shake, your hands cramp. Let it flow, in and out, and only close your fist when it’s around some fucker’s throat. They were alive at the end of it, is what mattered.
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Series: losers collex [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2167029
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	¿como es que dice el coro, cabrón?

The first time is - he can close his eyes and see it like a movie. Click, and they’re running, rooftop jumping, pitch black pouring rain, and Cougar’s done the math and knows that if they both don’t shatter several major bones it’ll be because some blessed saint took pity. And Cougar’s lithe enough, and he knows Jensen is better than people assume, and they’re neck and neck vaulting and hopping, and he thinks he mishears it. Jensen’s chatterbox voice, whispering to himself, and Cougar knows that word. “Parkour, parkour,” like a video on the internet, and Cougar stops dead. Laughs. Head back, rain in mouth and eyes, loud like he doesn’t care that they’re being followed.

Jensen freezes, stares at the sniper. Starts to giggle. A minute passes, two, and then a shot too close to Jensen’s ear and they’re off again, but that was the first time. There, in the rain, Jensen muttering to himself and Cougar nearly helpless with giggles even as they kept running.

The next time, and the one after, a hundred times or more, Cougar could count them off on his fingers without even trying, but one that he knew for what it was the moment it happened: in that nest, that long stakeout, when Jensen wouldn’t stop twitching, wouldn’t shut up, had finally clicked back into enough awareness to ask if he was bothering Cougar.

Cougar settled his shoulders, good as a nod and less likely to fuck up his sightlines. His eyes didn’t leave their mark, because he was a professional, and because he thought, very briefly, that maybe he had forgotten how to look elsewhere.

“Man, look, I know what I’m doing, I got this. I am on like motherfuckin’ Donkey Kong, my dude.”

“Digo.” Rusty, the voice. A hinge that didn’t want to open.

“You’re not just saying, asshole, you’re not saying anything, shut up, god you talk too much, shut up already.” They had been in this blind for two days, waiting. A tip about a tip about a possible Max sighting, and they couldn’t walk away because there wasn’t anything to walk away to. Cougar hadn’t turned his head in a day and a half: eyes bored into the concrete walls of the target, neck solid as stone. Jensen was, on his best days, restless and anxious. Two days not moving in a blind with someone who barely spoke hadn’t helped, and Cougar could, if he chose to slide his eyes to his left, have watched the muscles under Jensen’s skin twitch and leap and jump, his whole body begging to go do something, anything, jump off a building or shoot someone or anything, anything at all. As is, he could feel the tension, nearly smell it. “Sorry, shit, sorry, that’s on me, Cougs, you know, this is just the absolute worst, like, this is worse than Siberia. It wouldn’t be bad if I could go take a piss or something but no, maintain vigilance, fuckin’ Clay, like, come on,” ramble and whine, and Cougar liked Jensen just fine but also sometimes really wanted to punch him in the throat five or six times.

“So go.”

“Nah, man, I can’t leave you here with nobody at your back, you’re all petrified looking at the bunker, what happens when the more-evil version of Roque’s ghost pops up and knifes you in the neck, huh?” Jensen shifted again, got within an inch. They weren’t touching but Cougar felt as though they were, so close that his own skin buzzed, could sense the electricity running through the big guy at his side. “And anyway, the point is that this kind of recon is bullshit, know what I mean? I coulda gotten everything we’ve seen in, uh, four or five hours at the laptop. This is punishment, is what this is, for not snapping to right away.”

Cougar moved one shoulder up a fraction of an inch, then back down. Jensen kept talking, then—movement. Cougar muttered something. “There.” One perfect shot, through the mark’s left ear, and Cougar could nearly hear the air leave him through the scope. He smiled, a small one, and turned his head on a stiff neck to look at Jensen.

The man’s face was reddened from the effort of smiling so hard, and he kissed the side of Cougar’s head with a loud smack. “You’re a fuckin’ genius, my man, let’s get out of here.”

They’d packed up and run, and when Cougar’s stiff muscles quaked badly Jensen had half-carried him, hadn’t shut up, and that was another time, maybe the first real time, Cougar knew it. Cougar thought hard for a few minutes that night. Better, he decided, to let it slip through his hands like water. Try to hold too hard and you start to shake, your hands cramp. Let it flow, in and out, and only close your fist when it’s around some fucker’s throat. They were alive at the end of it, is what mattered.

* * *

They hadn’t ever touched - or, they touched all the time, it was that they hadn’t been intimate. No, that was wrong, too, intimacy was the watchword for the whole group: careful fingers on wounds, tick checks, shitting in holes with the other one watching their back. Hangovers and cold turkey, coming down from whatever a worse bad guy had dosed them with, panic attacks and hallucinations and the worst of themselves. They’d done all that.

They’d never kissed, or had any kind of sex, or touched each other in any kind of way that would lead to that. Jensen was a snuggly puppy, always wanted to share a cot if he could, more prone to drape himself over Cougar’s back in a car than stay in his own seat. But it was like there was a tripwire they could both see: this far, no further. Cougar slept with women often enough that he could pretend Jensen didn’t know he also slept with men and with people who weren’t either. But, and he should have known this, Jensen only missed cues about how people related to him personally, not about how people related to the world around them. So the first time Jensen walked into a room that the man Cougar’d been fucking had just exited, Cougar froze: half a minute, no more.

“Hey, Cougs, that guy was fine as hell. He into blondes?”

A snicker, muscles relaxed bit by bit.

“No, seriously, man, I bet I could lift him, dudes like that sometimes, think he’d be—” and Jensen cracked up, not at Cougar but in general.

They went on. Jensen kept trying to pick up women who more often than not ended the night with Cougar. Too, sometimes, carefully, he tried to pick up men, with a somewhat better success rate. He hadn’t, before, at least not where any of them could see. Cougar felt a little coal in his heart warm up, to be trusted with something other than keeping Jensen out of a grave. Trusted with a part of his life, something real.

And they kept living, kept surviving. Hurt, and broken, and fucked up, but alive. Cougar could do the math, or ask Jensen with two tapped fingers on the wrist, but. They’d crashed with Jensen’s sister until they got too antsy. Clay left, following Aisha. Pooch and Jolene and little Pooch went back to their house the next town over. Cougar stayed. Jensen stayed. Rent was weirdly high for a suburb, and besides Jake’s sister Jane was in real estate now, so they’d ended up sunk deep in a mortgage with a three-bedroom Craftsman house two blocks from Jane and Jensen’s niece, Marissa. Jensen had a panic attack every night for the first week, and then it settled enough that they unpacked. Boarded up a couple of windows with bookshelves, rearranged the furniture. Cleared out a hidey-hole in the attic, the kind of one-and-done setup Clay always recommended for doomed last stands.

Their neighbors on one side moved away a few weeks in, and Cougar could have felt bad but instead breathed easier. Less collateral damage, just in case, and fewer people to try and smile at the way people smile at people in the grocery store. The other side was street-facing, suboptimal but better than more people, and no one moved into the empty house. Stayed empty, quiet, for a good long while. When Cougar thought about it, he was pretty sure Jensen had bought it, or at least made it very difficult to buy. No reason to poke a good thing, so he let it lie, made sure both yards were mowed enough so no one would bug them about it.

Jobs were something. It’d been long enough that their new identities passed everything, so Cougar started working in a garage. Rode the bike down there every morning, ate lunch on the roof, back at sunset, four days a week - shop was closed Sundays, and Petunias games were usually on Fridays, and Wednesdays were the days he sat in a quiet room alone and let himself go numb, let Cougar take a break and the pain run the show.

The garage was nice. Everyone spoke Spanish, and no one pressed him too hard about anything, and he got to work with his hands. All good. Jensen had taken over coaching the Petunias, which wasn’t a real job but gave him something to put that laser focus into; he freelanced, something on the computer always, and brought in more than enough to cover their mortgage and most of Jane’s, too. At night they drank and played cards or video games, went to shooting ranges and golfed, threw pitches for Marissa to practice batting. Cougar cooked and Jensen did dishes. Jensen bought groceries and Cougar stocked up on first aid kits. Jensen worked out and Cougar patrolled.

And then, sometimes, Clay called. And they made excuses and took time off and came back richer and calmer, shook out whatever they’d picked up and continued on. They socked away money, identities for backup. Jensen went to the movies, all of them, anything that sounded cool or weird or stupid, and when the noise in Cougar’s head was calm enough he went, too. Jensen’s niece liked Go, the game, and taught Cougar, and Jensen’s sister brewed beer in her garage, and Jensen started picking up tai chi, and Cougar sat alone in a quiet room on Wednesdays and let the nothingness he knew lived inside himself rise up and drown him until he couldn’t take it any longer.

* * *

It was a Wednesday the next time it happened - or, the next time it happened that it stuck in his mind. The thing shaped like Cougar sat, legs bent, arms relaxed, eyes closed, only the breath and the air on his skin. Numb and hollow, not even a person, just form in space, and then the air shifted. The thing spun, knife under the cushion, teeth bared.

Jensen’s hands clutched grocery bags, a sheepish look on his face. “Sorry, sorry, hey, did you know the car clock runs fast? Like twenty minutes—”

The thing with the knife growled - would have felt embarrassed about it if he’d been a person, but on Wednesdays between eight and four he wasn’t a person, he was skin and pain and something that didn’t deserve anything good in its life. He had never explained this to Jensen, of course. Had told him that Wednesdays between eight and four he needed space and quiet, no disturbances, no one coming in. He thought, maybe, Jensen had known what was happening in that time, but the expression that replaced sheepish on the taller man’s face implied otherwise.

“Hey, Cougs, one second, okay? Let me put these down.”

The thing with the knife watched, teeth bared (bloody? The mouth tasted like blood but also like fear and the thing couldn’t be sure). Jensen set the bags on the floor, kept his hands open and easy to see. Took a step forward.

“So, here’s the thing. You look a little squirrelly. You okay? Having a flashback?” A pause. Jensen took another step. “Earth to Cougs. Talk to me, buddy. Can you tell me what day it is?”

 _Wednesday_ , the man who wasn’t there thought. The thing holding the knife just growled again.

“Right, sure, okay, living up to the namesake. Okay, that’s cool. It’s,” slowly, torturously, Jensen glanced down at his watch, “three forty-five. Whatever you’re doing’s always over by four, right?” A pause. “Right. So. I’ll just, like, sit here. With the groceries. And when you’re done, let me know. Lo entiendes?”

The thing with the knife was baffled, a rabbit trying to understand a highway, a tiger biting a stuffed toy. It stalked backward, knife ready, eyes on Jensen’s throat, and sank back to the cushion. It couldn’t settle back into the empty, not with the air wrong around it, but it could tear itself to shreds inside easily enough. The thing did so for another fourteen minutes.

“Yo, Cougs? Not trying to interrupt, but it’s four.”

The thing closed its eyes.

Cougar opened his eyes, and dropped the knife.

Jensen was on him almost immediately, kicked the knife backwards, hands on Cougar’s shoulders as much to hold him still as to check him for injuries. “Jesus fucking christ, man, the fuck—”

“Pèrdoname,” Cougar tucked his face into Jensen’s neck. The man was alive. The thing hadn’t killed him. Breathed in the smell, felt the pulse. Here, alive. Good.

“Cougs, tell me you’re okay.”

“No.” Cougar’s shoulder felt wet.

“Cougar.” Jensen sat back, big warm hands on his shoulders. “What the fuck, man?”

Cougar looked away, looked at the Petunias shirt on Jensen’s broad chest. “Uh, uh,” a pause. He wasn’t sure how to—“El pecado necesita respirar.” It wasn’t right, but it was close.

“Okay. Respirar’s ‘breathe,’ heard you yell that at me enough times. Necesita’s easy. So something needs to breathe, I got that. I don’t know what ‘pecado’ means, man,” Jensen said. “Cómo se dice ‘pecado’ en inglès?”

Cougar chuckled, half a breath. “Your accent is shit.”

“Yeah, no, I know. Help me out?”

“Sin,“ he said. “I’m tired.”

“Okay. Oh, like ‘peccadillo,’ okay, that tracks. Sin. So sin needs to breathe. Okay.” Jensen shuffled them backwards, towards a mostly-collapsed couch they kept meaning to replace. “Fuckin’ weirdly enough I think I get the context that’s so deeply lacking. You got bad shit, you want to let it air out a little. So you sit here and, what, dissociate for eight hours a week? Take a vacay from being Cougs, let yourself be someone else?” Got Cougar situated on the couch, but kept hold of Cougar’s shoulders.

“Thing.” Words were always hard, and what Cougar thought was probably shame made them harder just now. He wondered, quietly, if Jensen knew he was rubbing circles against Cougar’s skin with his thumbs like a worry stone.

Jensen didn’t bother trying to hide the cringe, not worth it, too smart for that. “Buddy, you’re not a thing. Not even when you growl at me, not even when you’re out of your mind on something, not even if you aren’t yourself. Always a person.”

Cougar mimed vomiting. “Sacarlo.”

Jensen pulled him close again, less panicked now but so much sadder. “I’m not a shrink, but I gotta think that’s not right. You can’t purge your way out of PTSD, man. Like those guys who go wild for military games say it’s an outlet for their shit, and it’s super not, I mean,” a deep, shaky breath. “Cougs, you can’t do that. Leave yourself behind, alone, without someone there in case you hurt yourself.” He pressed closed lips to Cougar’s temple, and didn’t pull away when Cougar leaned into it. Let a long minute pass, then turned, looked directly at him. “Next time, let me be here. If you try to use that knife, I swear to the baby Jesus and his unicorn friends I’ll take you down. It’s okay. I got you. You can’t do this alone, and while I’d super duper rather you not fucking do it all, you’ve got me, okay?”

Cougar leaned forward, rested his forehead on Jensen’s shoulder in answer. The man’s big, warm hands moved up, traced lines in his hair, delicate in case of razor blades. “If it makes you feel better.”

“Aw, Cougs, you’re a peach,” Jensen said. The thing was, Cougar didn’t even think it was sarcastic. Jensen let him get up, herded him into a shower, held out towels and clothes, and never shut up until Cougar pickpocketed him and used his phone, ordered pizza and also Chinese, and sat back down on the couch.

“Movie.” Cougar stretched, put his long bare feet on the coffee table they kept breaking and patching up.

“I get to pick?” Jensen looked delighted, his eyebrows up near his hairline. “Hell yes, man, I never get to pick the movie. Hmmm,” and he ran off, narrated his selection matrices in a plummy British accent he knew Cougar hated, finally ended up with one of the super-chill animated Japanese movies Marissa loved.

“Subs?”

“Never dubs, my man, although the dub for this one’s actually not pure garbage.” They settled back on the couch, Jensen’s big broad shoulder at just the right height. Cougar made it about eight minutes in, then he blinked and there was food spread out on the table, half-eaten and cold, and the TV showed the disc’s menu, where a cheerful song repeated endlessly.

“Bed?” Jensen half-listened to Cougar’s grumbling acquiescence while he turned off the TV.“You’re real cute, Cougs, but I’ll carry you when you’re shot and not any other time, you know that, get your feet up under you and walk, motherfucker.”

* * *

They shared a bed some nights, for warmth or nightmares or the skin hunger Jensen never seemed to sate. Settled back-to-back; just slept, just breathed. Usually, on Wednesday nights, Cougar had the same need Jensen always did to be held, to be comforted, and they slept curled around each other, too warm to escape. Tonight Cougar couldn’t, couldn’t take the touch. Went up to the roof and dozed, back against the chimney. When the sun peeked up, wreathed in clouds it turned purple and weak, he went back inside. Found Jensen asleep, propped against the wall across from the window.

“Ya amaneció.” Tip of the toe under Jensen’s leg. Damned heavy sleeper didn’t even move. “Jensen.”

“Five more minutes, Pooch,” he grumbled, and it was Cougar’s hoarse laugh that woke him all the way up. “Oh, hey. Morning. You there?”

Cougar inclined his head. “Thursday.”

“Cool! So, I already called in at the garage for you.” Cougar’s jaw didn’t drop, but that was from practice, not because he wasn’t surprised. “No, I know, but Santi acted like he didn’t understand me, so I told him his last three passwords and that I’d fuck his whole shit up if he didn’t let you off for a couple days. Snapped up real quick.”

Cougar reached out a hand, pulled Jensen up. “Stupid.”

“Yeah, well, we gotta talk, and—aw, my legs are asleep now. Why didn’t you come to bed, man, got me all worried about you.” Jensen leaned on Cougar, heavy, and let himself be led down the stairs.

“Air.”

“There’s literally always air, Cougs, there’s air in here, you don’t need to dump me in the hallway for air—”

“Thought you were sleeping.”

“I was!” Jensen made a pained sound. “Fuck, that hurts. I was, and then you never came in, and I had to piss like a racehorse and realized that you’d never come in, and then I saw the window open, and your stupid ass up on the roof, doing that creepy not-sleeping thing you do. So I figured, no prob, he’ll wake up and come to bed soon, I’ll just wait.”

Cougar rubbed one hand against Jensen’s back in apology. Got him seated at the kitchen bar. Pulled out a couple of pans. “Eggs?”

“Yes please.”

“Or, no. Forgot about—” He opened the fridge. “Move.” Jensen leapt up, pulled his laptop around to the other side of the island to give Cougar space.

“What’s that gonna be?” Cougar’s hands in the dough slowly warmed it back up, and he started forming the boat shapes instead of answering. “Aw, Cougs, you’re a saint. Fuck me running, I haven’t had vatrushka in—”

“No. Khachapuri.” Handed Jensen a sliver of dough. “Not sweet.”

“Even better, Cougs, my main man.” Jensen filched pinches of cheese from the platter, only laughed when Cougar smacked the back of his hands. On his laptop, he pulled up several different projects, turned on a Czech talk radio station they both liked, and the sounds of people yelling at each other about - Cougar’d missed part of it, maybe soccer? - and the click-clack of lightning-fast typing felt homey. Comforting. Good.

Cougar hissed, half a whistle, to get Jensen’s attention. “For Christmas, menudo? Start it the night before. Takes a long time.”

“Ooh, and all those little side things, yeah. We’ll do, uh, maybe a couple vegan deals too, you know, for that guy Jane keeps bringing around, if he’s still here.” Cougar smiled to himself, watched as Jensen opened up a new set of spreadsheets, titled it “Cougar Cooks Christmas,” got busy. Jensen muttered replies to the commentary - definitely politics, not soccer, now that Cougar was listening - in mediocre Urdu, keeping sharp, probably bringing down some small terrorist ring and watching women’s ping-pong and reorganizing Jane’s tax documents all at the same time.

Cougar watched him type while the boats of dough rose. Jensen was broad, bigger than people realized - the glasses and the computer and the running stream of gab tended to trick them. He was strong, could probably lift Cougar and hold him up, could probably do a lot of things. The dough was ready. Cougar put those thoughts in a neat-cornered box in his mind, moved toward the little boats.

* * *

When it became Wednesday again, Jensen settled into one of the high-backed chairs around the table they never ate at. “You do it all in one go? What about water?” Cougar moved one shoulder, a whole paragraph, and Jensen growled. “Man, you gotta hydrate. Can’t do eight hours without water.”

“All the time, we do.”

Jensen bared his teeth. “Yeah, fair point, but fun fact, I don’t give a shit. Water, Cougs, and I’d like you to eat something, too.”

“You a medic now?” Cougar did as he said, though, downed a bottle of water and most of a bowl of fried rice under Jensen’s watch. “Cushion?”

“Oh, nah. This’ll keep me awake. Not gonna let you be alone, man.” Jensen wolfed down his own bowl and what was left in Cougar’s. “Ready?”

Cougar muttered, settled onto the mat. His knife beside him on the floor, Cougar shut his eyes and waited for the creature to open them. He waited. Kept waiting.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about taking an improv class. Jane took one with that vegan dude and she hated it, said it was way more my scene. You think I could do that? I’m good at ‘yes, and,’ right, Cougs?”

Cougar pried one eye open just enough that his eyeroll would register, closed it back. Waited some more. It didn’t usually take this long.

“Oh, hey, sorry, but I’m gonna forget otherwise, tomorrow night we gotta go out, they’re showing the _Night of the Living Dead_ remake at the Paradise. The one with Tony Todd in it. It’s not as good as the old one, obviously, but Tony Todd, though. Am I right?”

Cougar half-grinned before he could stop himself. “‘Be my victim,’” his voice creaky.

“Ugh, so good. Hey, let’s do a whole marathon: that remake at the Paradise, then we’ll come home for _Candyman_ and, what do you think, _The Crow_?”

Cougar opened his eyes again. “ _Final Destination_?” Frowned. The beast kept not coming.

Jensen grinned. “There’s like six of those, Cougs, we’d have to go Tony Todd marathon into _Final Destination_ marathon. You’ll need a couple more days off.”

A long, tense silence. Cougar breathed in, waited for the creature to breathe out. Started to get a little light-headed, waiting. Eventually exhaled, defeat on his breath. “Cabrón?”

“Si?”

“Not going to happen.”

“What, more days off?” Jensen’s shit-eating grin brightened as he helped Cougar to his feet. “Aw, I bet Santi’s my new BFF these days, you know? Give you paid vacation if you ask for it, or if I send him a friendly little email. His porn preferences are, like, really specific. I don’t perv and tell, just take my word for it, specific as hell.”

Cougar nodded, let himself be pulled along to some burger place Jensen liked, methodically shoveled in a veggie burger and cheese fries, watched Jensen scarf half of each of the four things he ordered and box the four untouched halves up. “Poor kid habit,” Jensen had said once, sheepish, when Cougar’d asked about it ages ago with a glance. “Get as many meals as you can out of whatever you got. In case tomorrow there’s nothing.” This was probably true on some level, but in practice, the food never quite made it back to Jensen’s fridge.

True to form, he handed off three of his half meals to people on the street before they got back to the car. Jensen jabbered happily with anybody who looked especially unlikely to get anything from anybody else, handed over the food and some cash. Same as always. His fourth leftover nearly made it home this time, until they saw the guy who’s always at their gas station, and chatted with him for ten or fifteen about the most recent Petunias game - Jensen always tells everybody about the Petunias, and Cougar always rolls his eyes and goes along, every time. This guy, Arnau, got converted into a full-fledged fan, though, so the chat is both longer and more interesting to hear than Jensen’s standard lectures.

That night, Jensen felt hyper and Cougar felt restless. They leaned into each other on the couch, played Mario Kart, drank a little too much. Started making dares: Cougar showed off five-finger fillet, Jensen hacked two governmental agencies in ten minutes, Cougar held himself in pull-up position for 4 solid minutes without even breaking a sweat, Jensen ate something out of a Tupperware neither of them remembered putting in the fridge. The energy felt weird, off, like they had too many sparks and not enough kindling.

“Sorry, Cougs,” Jensen said, sounded actually sorry. “For fucking up your whole ritual. That wasn’t my intent, I mean it. I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Cougar chewed on that idea. “Okay.”

“Really. I feel pretty bad about it. You seem antsy. My fault.”

Cougar shrugged one shoulder. “Good intentions.”

“Yeah, well.” Jensen stretched, big arms pulling up his shirt just enough, and Cougar could have, on another day, pulled his gaze away from the skin the movement showed. But it had been a specific and strange day, and for once in his life he got caught looking. “Cougs?”

“Si.”

“What are the chances, if I try to kiss you, you shoot me in the face?”

Cougar made a thinking face, then shrugged. “One in three.”

Jensen laughed, shook his head. “Best odds I’ve had in a while. For real though.” He leaned forward, peered over his glasses. “Would that be a problem?”

Jensen was a better kisser than Cougar had expected. Jensen, it seemed, had expected Cougar to be good in bed, but was still pleasantly surprised. Neither of them had gotten laid in months, so it didn’t take long - not thatthey enjoyed it any less. Jensen, surprising no one, was a talker all through; Cougar, surprising Jensen no doubt, was a noisy enough motherfucker too. “Jesus Christ, Cougs,” the big man panted, sprawled out on the bed while Cougar hopped in the shower. “Why the hell haven’t we been fucking all along?”

From the bathroom, Cougar called, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?”

“Nah, man, fuck that noise. No one would’ve asked, and while I sure as shit would have told, no one listens to me anyway. Think of how many cool places I could’ve blown you! That drug runner’s mansion in Uzbekistan? We could have fucked in that pool with the shark tank in the middle of it!”

Cougar stepped out, naked and wet, and grinned. “Cape Town.”

Jensen sat up, propped on his elbows. “God, right? When Roque burned that office park down, I could have dipped you into a kiss in front of the fire like a goddamn movie.”

Later, in bed, half-asleep, Jensen rolled closer to Cougar, wrapped him in big strong arms. “Hey,” he said, soft and slurring just a bit. “You’re pretty cool.”

“I know.” Cougar turned to face him, pulled him in for another kiss. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, Tony Todd,” Jensen was almost asleep again. “Popcorn.”

They got through _Living Dead_ and about half of _Candyman_ before Jensen’s big arms pulled Cougar close, settled around his waist. Cougar leaned in, only half intending to do so, and dozed for a few scenes. “Warm,” he muttered as Jensen quietly chuckled. “Furnace, you are.”

“Always, man, even when I was a fat little nerd in school.” Jensen shrugged them around, pulled Cougar up and over himself. “You gotta eat more meat, get your circulation going.”

Cougar grinned, feral and glad. “Oh, circulation. Si.” Braced himself just out of Jensen’s reach. “Blood pumping?”

Jensen tried to laugh, but the way his pupils dilated and his breath caught, Cougar knew he was moving fast into “turned on” and out of “goofing around.”

“Relax,” he said, bent down to nuzzle Jensen’s throat. “Respiras.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Jensen reached up, one hand heavy on Cougar’s neck. “Come here.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)" by K'naan, Residente, Riz MC, & Snow Tha Product
> 
> > Con un pico, una pala,  
> > y un rastrillo,  
> > te construimos un castillo.  
> > ¿Como es que dice el coro cabrón?  
> > Immigrants! We get the job done.  
> ....  
> > With a pick, a shovel,  
> > and a rake,  
> > we built you a castle.  
> > How does the chorus go, asshole?
> 
> (please note that my Spanish is as bad as Jensen's, so grain of salt and your indulgence begged)
> 
> \- Digo = Say/Just saying  
> \- Lo entiendes? = You get it?/Understand?  
> \- Pèrdoname = Forgive me  
> \- Sacarlo = Remove it/Get it out  
> \- Ya amaneció = The sun's up


End file.
